It’s great that RIM is trying to offer options at all form factors and price points, but it’s hard not to feel like that focus could instead be put towards getting a QNX smartphone out the door a little sooner. The OS 7 devices are really just a stepping stone to that eventuality, so it seems bizarre that RIM is spending so much effort to make OS 7 such a significant generation of devices. of course, if the QNX smartphone doesn’t land until mid-2012, at least there will be a stable of relatively new devices to keep RIM afloat until then.

I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the naming convention; RIM’s trying to make “Curve” the new entry-level family, but I generally feel like people associate form factors with names rather than pricetags. In any case, here’s hoping the battery life on the Curve 9380 is better than the Torch 9860… So far, that seems to be the biggest strike against the latest BlackBerry devices, but if the lower-end ones can burn a little cooler, they could be attractive options for busy people.